December Sweeps - Day 322

I'm nearly done with Tina Fey's "Bossypants."  It has been the fastest read of recent years, and I'm a little bummed I've burned through it so quickly.  I wish I had the charm and talent (and fame, of course) of Tina Fey, because I'd love to write an autobiography like hers.*

Now that 2020 is finally coming to a close, I should think up some resolutions for the new year.  I made a list of 20 goals for 2020 last year, and I guess I could do that again.  I think I set Collaborate on a story with Big Anklevich as the first goal, but stuff like Finish "Only Have Eyes For You" and Start saving up for a mail order bride and Finish "Balms & Sears" might belong on my list.  I'll keep thinking.

Heading to the library now.

I got set up, started to write, managed 78 words, and then started checking emails and news stories.  This is the deadest I've seen the library since that time I came when it first reopened, and the blind Korean man asked the librarian for help and the lady said she couldn't go near him.  It made me wonder if there was a football game in town (that does occasionally happen--causing bad traffic on a Friday or Saturday evening--but I don't believe spectators are allowed in the stadium at this time), or if something else was going on (maybe some huge news story had broken and everyone was glued to their TV--probably Donald Trump holed up in the White House belltower with a sniper rifle, picking off secret service agents who were desperately trying to get the President to safety).

(this was on the rack at the library)

Regardless, here I sit, all broken-hearted, tried to write, but only started

to surf the internet, which I could be doing at home.

I thought about doing another Fake Sean Connery song today, and thought I'd do a cover of "Bad Reputation" by Joan Jett.  I was even singing "I know I've got a bad reputation, and it isn't just talk, talk, talk" in Connery's voice in the car.  But when I looked it up, Joan Jett's song isn't anything like that (it may be that song that "Freaks & Geeks" used as its theme song, one of the Jeopardy! questions I couldn't get when I auditioned for the game show in Culver City).

No, the song I was thinking of was by Freedy Johnston, who was a male One Hit Wonder in the Nineties.  Whoops.

That was a good song, but totally forgotten now, like the first hit the Rembrandts had before the "Friends" theme.

Now the sun is going down, and weird, I'm starting to feel sorry for myself.  There are four other people at the library, all of them happier than me, and I guess it's time to take another unflinching look at my life.  I was hoping to set some writing goals for 2021, but now I'm thinking I might have to set some of more significance, and those never work out.

Of course, in 2020 I've done thousands of sit-ups and run hundreds of miles, two achievements I've never experienced before, and that ain't nothing.

Regardless, the sun went down, and nobody was alive to see it, and after a while, I went back to my story.  I think I'll dedicate this one to Marshal Latham, if I finish it (and it's really bad), though dang, this is gonna be a long one.  It's a story I could only have written in 2020, but it takes place on another planet, far enough into the future that pretty much all technology will have changed.  

I have never been a big writer (or reader) of Science Fiction, and I just plain don't want to come up with new slang and new inventions and new wrinkles in what humanity has become.  I just want it to be today, except in space.  I've used the word "Comms" instead of "phone" and "Terran" instead of world or Earth, and "rang off" instead of "hung up," and the damn metric system, but it's really not my bag, baby, and I've never responded to Sci-Fi that says "we took a transpo to the employdiface" rather than "we took a taxi to work."

So far, the best world building I could come up with was that the main character sees a teenage boy in the elevator who has enormous breast implants, and he just goes about his day.  There, it's the future, okay?

Sit-ups Today: 200
Sit-ups In December: 2160

Words Today: 1277
Words In December: 17,518 

*Of course, now that I'm nearly done with it, I'm thinking that it isn't an autobiography at all, but a series of essays, some of which were previously published in The New Yorker.  I wonder if she has a sequel planned.